


Playing with a bad hand

by junebugtwin



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Humor, More characters to be added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Self-Insert, Sort Of, Swearing, Worldbuilding, a complete disregard for canon, as she barrel dives into twenty knives, missing-nin shenanigans, whoops the protagonist says
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:21:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24363460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junebugtwin/pseuds/junebugtwin
Summary: Ella Ackerly had an anime phase sure, just like most people- but she'd had exquisite taste thank you very much, she definitely never would have watchedNaruto. Unfortunately for her, this turns out to be a rather poor life decision when she's teleported into a world of blood and death and getting immediately stabbed by sharp things.(and if the plot strays from cannon wildly, well, she wouldn't know the difference.)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 34





	1. Nothing like a pants full of river water to wake you up

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! (Z̶u̶k̶o̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶e̶) and welcome! Before you start reading there are a few things it might be helpful to know: namely I haven't seen a single goddamn episode of Naruto, read only a bit of the manga a thousand years ago, and know most of my information about it via fanfiction and hasty google searches! Also, the events of this fic don't ever remotely follow cannon, and I make up a bunch of bullshit because I want to. There's also quite a bit of swearing, an amount of blood and gore, and other morally troubling events in this fic so, if that sort of thing doesn't float your boat then you do you! 
> 
> Anyway, have fun, and make sure to comment so I don't die out of lack of self-confidence. :)

It’s like blinking- one moment she’s in her living room, reaching out to the plate she’d left beside her comfy spot on the couch, meaning to grab a grape, and then she’s suddenly- well, not there.

There’s no magical pulse, no visions, she doesn’t black out, or die, or disappear in a burst of white light.

It’s just that suddenly, she is staring at some random dude, her ass and legs completely soaked in cold river water.

Ella Ackerly stares, flinching at the sudden change, scrabbling backwards from the man and almost plunging herself deeper into the icy water.

Beyond confused, she swings her head around, trying to wrap her mind around where exactly she was- and why the _hell_ she was there.

The answers she received by looking around did not in fact clear a single thing up, it quite unhelpfully made things worse actually. Because, yes, she was a forgetful person- she’d once walked halfway to a nearby convenience store before realizing she wasn’t wearing any shoes- but this was a different level of crazy.

She was sitting in the middle of a stream, surrounded by trees and thick bush on all sides, not even slightly reminiscent of the city she’d _just_ previously been living in- she was wearing a weird brown sort of tee-shirt looking thing that was made out of oddly thick material, and almost identically colored loose pants. Which was definitely _not_ what she’d been wearing before! No oversized grey hoodie, no comfortable sweat pants, and her feet were pitifully bare of her fuzzy mouse socks- they were bear of everything in fact, including shoes!

Feeling panic shoot through her Ella jerked her chin up, staring at the random stranger who was peering at her gruffly- it was an adult man, which _really_ didn’t make things any better- some guy with dark and freakishly green hair, draped and tangled over his shoulders like particularly filthy seaweed. He had a slight beard, and frankly hideously fuzzy eyebrows, not that she could really judge, what with her bottom half being soaked in dirty water.

His eyes were- honestly Ella couldn’t believe she was even saying this, but they were _yellow_ \- and not _just_ yellow, instead of white the rest of his eye was fucking _black_. Like he was the big-bad from Mulan- whatever that guy’s name was.

His outfit looked much better than hers, dark stained leather topped with heavy pelts which at least appeared to be actual animal fur. He looked like a cosplayer for some edgy fantasy series, except for the fact he was wearing fucking _sandals_ , and also covered in very real looking blood stains and mud. It _smelled_ real too.

Ella panted, trembling slightly- so what, had some crazy survival guy _kidnapped_ her?! And if she was wearing different clothes then- did he fucking change her into these?!

Why didn’t she remember anything! Surely she would have noticed if this massive ass dude had snuck into her house?

The man scratched his chin, and spoke, his voice incredibly deep and rumbling.

“You awake yet?” He asked nonsensically, sounding incredibly impatient for the person who had presumably kidnapped and drugged _her_.

“W-what? Where am I?! Who are you- why’d you bring me here!? What do you want?!” Ella yelled, feeling a bit hysterical- which honestly? Was her God-given fucking _right_ considering the circumstances.

The man looked, if anything, more annoyed by her words, the side of his mouth lifting up into an unpleasant snarl.

“Shut it with the questions. Get up.” He growled, before standing himself- _Jesus_ she somehow hadn’t even noticed he’d been crouching, how was he this fucking tall?!

Frustrated nearly to tears, Ella wobbled to her feet, water pouring off her lap and splashing noisily down to the stream as she did. Not feeling incredibly willing to listen to this freak, she huffed out and angry breath and spoke again, hands curled up into fists.

“No! Answer me!” She yelled aggressively- and then the man was suddenly much closer before and there was a sharp pain radiating in her arm. Ella gasped and glanced down- expecting to see his hand bruising her or some such thing, and very much not expecting there to be a fucking _knife_ buried in her arm instead.

 _There’s a knife in my arm_ Ella thought, paling significantly, before letting out a hoarse scream.

The man grunted something she was too busy crying over to hear, and then had the fucking audacity to pull the thing out of her arm- as casually as one might unplug a wire from a socket, causing blood to spray out of the wound at an incredibly alarming rate. The wound- the wound- _her_ wound Jesus h Christ- The _stab_ wound in _her_ arm!!

Ella whimpered, hot tears dripping down from her eyes unbidden, and shakily clutched at the crimson cut with one hand, shaking harder as thick blood managed to still splash between her fingers.

The man, apparently bored with her now, turned around and shuffled to shore, crouching down to dig through some sort of ancient looking bag.

Ella had twisted her ankle once as a kid, and one time when she was fourteen her sister had punched her right in her newly budded tit, and while both those instances had hurt, neither of them could even hold a candle to the insistent hot throbbing pain radiating from her arm.

Trembling, Ella grabbed a piece of her shirt, and using her teeth to hold one end in place, ripped a long stretch of the fabric, before messily tying it to her arm. She wasn’t like, a _doctor_ or anything, but even she knew that it was better to have a shitty shredded up shirt than to bleed out in some fucking random forest with a psychotic stranger as the only fucking witness.

Ella panted, feeling like she’d just run a marathon and injected twelve shots of espresso into her veins at the same time. Carefully, she stepped out of the stream, the mud of the shore sinking between her toes in a pleasingly distracting way.

Okay. Okay.

So.

So she was stuck in the middle of nowhere, with Stabby Bitch, and she wasn’t allowed to fucking ask questions or he’d probably cut her up into little pieces or some other messed up shit. Also, she now had a goddamn _knife_ wound! Which was wild!! And hurt!

Currently the man of the hour wasn’t looking at her, intensely preoccupied with peering through his weird backpack like it was the first time he’d seen it. Technically speaking, wasn’t this a good time to try to escape?

Ella winced, and looked back down at the horror show that was her left arm. Then again, she didn’t exactly want a repeat performance of _that_ \- and he’d moved so fast, she hadn’t even seen him take out the knife, who was to say he couldn’t easily catch her?

She stared down hopelessly at her arm for a second before-

Ella blinked. Why-

Her arm was tan? Why was her arm tan? She was as pale as a fucking new moon, always had been, so why…?

Shaken, Ella moved her good arm up to touch her hair, only to feel nothing but air where she reached at her shoulder. Had Stabby Bitch cut her hair while she was out? Fucking creepy

She caught a piece closer to her head, and paused- the texture was all wrong, too thick- her hair was notoriously thin and silky- it was pretty much her only redeeming feature.

Pinching a strand, she carefully moved it into her vision, pulling a bit to reach that far, only to let go out of surprise.

It was brown? What the hell? When had Mr. fucking cave man had time to dye her hair? And why??

She didn’t get long to consider this before Stabby Bitch was standing up again, pulling the pack up and around his shoulders before turning around and glaring at her with his freaky eagle eyes.

“I want fish. I’ll be back.” He snapped, before literally leaping into the treetops like he was spiderman, and dashing away, his body disappearing into the foliage too quickly for her to even process.

What.

Ella gaped at the spot he’d been seconds ago, oddly offended in this blatant breech of kidnapping protocol.

Why did he just leave her here?? Surely he knew she’d just run away??

Ella took a few steps into the grass, the rough ground unpleasant to her feet after so long of standing in the soft mud.

She wanted to just sprint into the forest as fast as she could- she didn’t know where she was, or what direction to head in to reach civilization, but dying by bear or dehydration or what have you would still probably be better than Stabby Bitch cutting out her heart and eating it or whatever it was he wanted from her right?

Still, she hesitated. He’d jumped onto the branches above her head as easily as she might step up some stairs or get on a bike- completely naturally and with little to no effort. And these weren’t small tree’s either! They were actually much taller and wider than she was used to.

If he could do that sort of thing, than tracking her down would probably be easy- and the last thing she wanted to do was make a guy who thought asking questions about why you were kidnapped was a capital offence mad…so?

So. Ella swallowed, and slowly turned back to the river.

He said he ‘wanted fish’. She wasn’t sure if that was an explanation for where he was going, or a command, but surely getting the man some fish wouldn’t _hurt_ anything.

The trouble was, she’d never been the outdoorsy type- or at least, not the ‘let’s go fishing’ type. She’d never fished with the proper equipment, and right now she didn’t even have that. She couldn’t exactly just scoop up the fish with her bare hands, she knew that from trying to pet the koi at one of her rich friend’s fancy ponds- fish were slippery little bastards, even with all the tenacity and single minded focus of a determined seven year old girl.

So, that made things more difficult, but she was smart, and more pressingly, in mortal danger, so she kinda had to find a way.

Shuffling towards a nearby bush Ella searched around for a moment, careful to keep her still horribly wounded arm away from any out reaching branches.

After a bit she found what she was looking for, a sturdy looking and relatively straight stick, and proceeded to harshly yank it from the bushes clutches with all her one armed might.

It came out with a spray of leaves and dirt, but at this point she couldn’t possibly be more covered in the stuff anyway, so she didn’t exactly care.

So now she had a stick. Which was progress! Unfortunately she’d probably need to sharpen the stick as well for it to work as a proper hunting instrument, and Stabby Bitch hadn’t been kind enough to leave behind any of his oddly shaped knives for her to use.

Sighing heavily, she awkwardly maneuvered the stick until it stood somewhat upright, and attempted to simply rip off pieces of the wood with her bare hand strategically, to make a sharp-ish point.

This was much harder to do than she’d first predicted, and for a solid minute or so, only succeeded in scraping her working hand a bunch with the rough bark.

Scowling and huffing, she eventually managed to get it looking like she at least knew what a sharpened stick was supposed to _be_ , and turned back to the stream she was starting to loathe.

In a combination of good luck and absolute irony her blood spilled into the shallow water had in fact brought a whole array of stupid little silver fish- feeding willfully off her pain because they were _bastards_ who were probably in league with Stabby Bitch.

“Oh I see the play, you little fuckers, don’t even try to act innocent-“ She grouched, uncomfortably managing to crouch down to her knees without making her arm flare up in anymore pain than it was already inflicting on her.

The fish of course, did not respond.

Scowl deepening, Ella lifted up the make-shift spear and carefully aimed for the fastest of the bunch, and as quickly as she could stabbed it down.

Much to her actual surprise, the fish wasn’t able to get away in time, and she’d successfully managed to skewer it.

Ella blinked, honestly not expecting that attempt to work in the slightest, and brought the spear up to stare at the fish she’d managed to catch.

It was definitely dead which was nice- the fish might have been little assholes working for the enemy, but they didn’t deserve to suffer.

Ella carefully deposited the still bleeding body onto a relatively flat rock- which wasn’t really Food Safe, but considering the circumstances, probably the best she could do.

She adjusted her stance, and waited for the fish to come back, focused intently on the water.

* * *

The first fish had turned out to be either particularly slow, or a complete fluke, because the rest of her fishing experience had not gone nearly as smoothly.

Mostly they just darted away the moment she even thought about bringing her spear down, but once she’d misjudged her own footing and had ended up half submerged by chilly river water. Again.

Hours later, she’d finally managed to catch one more fish, this one quite a bit smaller than the first, and had piled it carefully beside the other.

It was this exact moment that Stabby Bitch had decided to return, dropping from the canopy above like honest to god batman, and scaring the crap out of her.

Yelping, Ella had stumbled back onto her butt, this time only on the mud instead or in the stream, which was a debatable improvement.

Somehow he actually managed to look worse than when she’d last seen him, covered in blood and smelling bad enough that she’d actually had to stop herself from puking. Like she was a cartoon character or something, it was unreal.

The blood thing was absolutely horrifying, and doubly so when she observed him enough to realize that he had no visible wounds and that probably it was from _other_ _people_.

She hadn’t exactly doubted Stabby Bitch _could_ be a murderer, but this cold confirmation was almost too much, and Ella had to consciously stop herself from hyperventilating. Nothing would be helped by further freaking out she reminded herself skittishly- she _had_ to keep a calm head, there really was no other alternative.

Stabby Bitch barely glanced at her, instead peering down intensely at the fish she’d laid out with a critical expression.

“Two?” He asked contemptuously, which wasn’t a fucking sentence for one thing, and also wasn’t a very polite thing to say to someone who’d just spent real fucking hours of her life splashing around in a freezing cold stream of her own blood for him.

Resisting the urge to snap something mean and sarcastic than would probably get her stabbed again, Ella nodded, keeping her head down. If she had to act like some noble persons midwife in eighteen whatever to get out of this then she would- she had pride but not enough to die over.

Stabby Bitch glances over at her critically, his shitty-ass eyebrows furrowing in contempt.

 _If you don’t like it I can just eat both_ she thinks but for obvious reasons does not say.

“I’m sorry…I don’t- I haven’t really fished before.” She offers hesitantly, and he glares over at her, something in his face screaming ‘are you an idiot?’

“Obviously.” He pauses, considering something, and Ella hopes he’ll actually offer some tips about how to properly fish, because honestly she’d take it even if he said it in his stupid asshole voice.

“Don’t speak to me unless I say you can, I’m important.” He says instead, and Ella carefully keeps her face meek instead of the fucking _furious_ that she feels because she likes possessing all her fingers. Why did she ever assume he might have something helpful to say, Jesus Christ this dude had some serious fucking _issues_.

God, ‘I’m important’ he says, to the random person he kidnapped in the middle of a shitty forest, dressed like a LARPer who tripped into a giant fucking bowl of jam. What an absolute asshole.

She nods , silently fuming, and tilts her head down, carefully observing him out of the corner of her eye.

Stabby Bitch nods to himself, which makes her want to kick him, and then picks up the two _unsatisfactory_ fish and spears them on the stick she’d been using- which she hadn’t even seen him pick up- and trudges past her more firmly onto the shore.

Ella cautiously follows him, body tensed up in case he randomly decides to be a little bitch for no reason again.

He drops to the ground like a sack of wet sand, disturbing the dirt and rocks as he slams down to a sitting position.

“Go get sticks.” He commands stupidly, waving his hands at the forest around him. Presumably he wants to build a fire, which Ella doesn’t hate the idea of- the sun is slowly going down and she’s been soaked multiple times today in frigid water, so she’s not exactly retaining a lot of body warmth.

Grumbling inwardly about Stabby Bitches apparent inability to say ‘please’ like a normal fucking human being, she moves towards the treeline, grimacing as she peers in.

The ground is naturally completely covered in sticks and rocks and plant life, including sharp branches, thorns, and nettles- and seeing as someone decided to deprive her of fucking shoes-

 _God_. Ella lets out a small sigh, before carefully maneuvering herself further, twisting between trees, trying to keep her feet relatively undamaged, and at the same time not let literally a _single_ thing touch her wounded arm. It hurt enough just on its own thank you, without adding poison ivy and stinging nettles to the mix.

Picking up the required sticks is a bit slow thanks to that, and she’s unsurprised to see Stabby Bitch glare at her more and more impatiently every time she approaches with a bundle.

Well! Too bad for him! If he wanted this done quickly he’d either come help her, or, _I don’t know_ , maybe _not_ fucking stick his goddamn triangle knife into her goddamn arm??

It wasn’t like he was doing anything really important in the meantime; he was just staring at some weird coverless book, flipping through the pages seemingly at random, an oddly curious look on his face.

The book itself was weird, almost every page having a picture of weird anime looking dudes and a blurb, presumably about them, bellow it. Ella had no idea why he was so fascinated with it, but whatever, she, a lowly peasant, shouldn’t be judging his _majesties_ fucking reading tastes.

At one point she arbitrarily brings ‘enough’ wood and he lets her stop.

She stands awkwardly for a few moments, watching as he arranges the branches carefully into an admittedly well-made campfire. She expects him to demand she go do some menial task for him again, but after a few minutes of deafening silence, she hesitantly begins to sit down- not beside him, mind you, but somewhat close to the wood pile- waiting for him to snap at her.

He doesn’t, and eventually she settles into a position that is the most comfortable she can get, given that she’s sitting on hard packed dirt and also was recently stabbed.

When the wood is properly arranged to his liking he sits back, and she waits for him to produce a match from thin air, or perhaps do that cool thing that survivalist people do where they use friction to start a fire.

He does none of this, and bizarrely reaches down, grabs some mud, and cups it in his hand. Now sufficiently confused, Ella watches raptly as he moves his arm over the fire, and then squeezes the dirt in a closed fist- and then his hand lights up??

Ella’s eyes have never been wider, but they get even bigger when he lets go of what used to be dirt, but is now weirdly bright orange. Ella watches with amazement as the wood immediately catches fire as soon as the magic mud touches its surface.

_What?????_

She gapes, and dearly wants to fucking ask Stabby Bitch some questions- because, uh, _hello_!!! He just did magic????

Like, real in front of her eyes, quantifiable magic!!!

But of course, Princess Stabby Bitch has declared she keep her dam mouth shut, so instead she stares at him, willing him to not be an asshole just this once and explain what the hell he’d just did done did.

Predictably, he does not, not even bothering to look her way as he sets up a spit to roast the fish on.

* * *

The fish are really delicious, and she eats hers quickly, deeply wishing she’d been able to hunt more by the time she’s done. It doesn’t help her rapid hunger that she’d got the smaller fish, but then, she had never expected otherwise on that account. Actually, she was pleasantly surprised he’d given her any at all.

Ella yawns, feeling incredibly tired after the roller coaster she’d just gone through. Stabby Bitch glances her way judgmentally, as if she’d just committed tax evasion by expressing a basic human response, and she pointedly does _not_ give him the middle finger she so badly wants to.

Stabby Bitch cracks his knuckles- which makes a pretty horrible sound- and then practically snaps his own neck casually, which puts the previous noise to shame, and then lays down.

He doesn’t even put down a sleeping bag or get out a blanket, just fucking- _lays_ _down_ on the _dirt_ , like a caveman.

Ella doesn’t even get so much as a chance to do the same before he snaps at her.

“No. Take watch until the moon sits in the middle of the sky.” He growls, and Ella stares at him like the crazy person he is.

It’s not that she has trouble believing he has enemies, what with all the murder he was definitely doing in his off-time, but what was she supposed to do?? Sit up on a log and stare out at the pitch blackness?? Not everyone has fucking horrible cat eyes, for all she knew he could use magic to see in the dark or sense body heat or some shit- she was just a normal ass person! Albeit, she had gone through some _bizarre_ physical changes recently, but that didn’t mean she was suddenly some badass who could smell danger or whatever.

Naturally, she doesn’t bother to complain about any of this, and sourly moves her back until she’s leaning up against a mossy log.

She was so tired, she could barely keep her eyes open, and now she had to wait until ‘the moon sits in the middle of the sky’ like she was some sort of middle ages wizard.

Also, her arm had at zero point stopped throbbing painfully, but at least before she’d had things to focus on, and now that she was effectively doing sweet FA it was making itself more known.

Ella frowned, gently peeking through her shitty bandage to peer at her wound. She immediately tied it back up and tried not to throw up.

Yep. That sure was a stab wound. At least it had stopped bleeding.

God, that was her ‘at least’ now- not ‘at least I don’t have to do school’ or ‘at least I remembered the shoes halfway’- she was now being happy that she wasn’t actively bleeding out.

Ella stared morosely into the ever-darkening wilderness and contemplated the crazy fuckening that had been cast upon her. Time had not awakened any answers from her memory as to how Stabby Bitch had managed to kidnap her, nor why she looked different, or why she sounded-

Wait. Quietly Ella whispered ‘hello’ to herself.

Ah. Well then.

She wasn’t speaking English. Automatically- so automatically that she somehow, stupidly, hadn’t noticed she was speaking what sounded like Japanese. Which was crazy, because, because- she didn’t know how to speak fucking _Japanese_!! Sure, she’d had her anime faze as a teenager- she was only human after all- but even then she’d only known a couple of words or phrases, and not well enough to speak them so fluently and with a perfect accent like she did now!

This had to be more magic stuff right? Like, there was no logical reason this could be happening to her- people didn’t just start randomly speaking a completely different language, it just didn’t happen!

But god almighty, what did that even mean?? She couldn’t just shrug her shoulders and go, _oh well,_ I guess it’s just fucking magic, nothing to see here! Like?? What???

So, like, what now? Did she-

Ella paused mid-internal rant and the sound of snapping in the wilderness. Freezing up, she berated herself for not ‘keeping watch’ properly like an idiot- if the magic police, or frankly, normal police where after Stabby Bitch then she’d likely get caught in the crossfire- now was not the time to have an existential freak out, as valid as the topic itself was.

Ella starred at the spot the noise was coming from, barely breathing. For a few moments nothing happened, before a small squirrel burst out of the bush and hopped up a nearby tree.

Sighing to herself, and honestly feeling a tad silly, Ella relaxes, messaging her temple. Holy shit. She was going to have a heart attack over a fucking squirrel, and Stabby Bitch was going to have nobody but himself to blame for it.

It was dark enough now that she could barely see anything in the thick of the woods, though the small clearing that the stream cleaved out was at least a bit visible thanks to the light of the moon. Some type of cricket chirped repetitively in the air, and the stream itself made a rather soothing sound. Occasionally the wind picked up a bit, and the trees shook gently- the fire was slowly dying out, and thankfully had not caught anything ablaze while she was inwardly panicking and Stabby Bitch was asleep.

She realized that now was probably another good time to high tale it out of here, but she felt no more confident than she did earlier in her escaping probability- in fact, her confidence in that field had plunged significantly, thanks to Stabby Bitches fun little spark show. If he really was magical, then she’d probably need a greater distraction than just sleep to make her break for it. Not an especially encouraging thought, but there it was.

Ella sighed, and glared up at the moon, which stubbornly remained very not the middle of the sky-ish.

This was going to be a long fucking night.


	2. You might think you know whats going on, but you probably don't

And a long fucking night it had been. By the time it was time she was able to finally wake Stabby Bitches ass up she was literally asleep with her eyes open, a husk of a human being.

He of course, hadn’t bothered to thank her, but at that point she’d hardly cared- she was exhausted already, and the act of jumping at every little sound or movement in the forest had tired her out even further.

She didn’t even have the time to mentally whine about being forced to sleep on the bare-ass ground before she’d passed out. Which was for the best probably, because the less time she thought about all the bugs and snakes and other things that might crawl over her in her sleep the better.

(Not that she had anything personally against bugs or snakes, in fact, she loved snakes- the dude she’d pretended to date when she was seventeen had a pet snake named Garlic Sauce and she’d loved him enough to put up with his owners stupid hair and lack of personal hygiene for much longer than initially planned.)

She’d vaguely hoped, in the split second before closing her eyes, that she’d wake up at home, perfectly normal except for the absolutely _hog_ wild dream she’d had and would probably never forget.

Unfortunately for her, she’d sinned too much apparently, and God was not done punching her in the metaphorical dick just yet.

She woke up to a sharp burst of pain in her side, and immediately flashed her eyes open, struggling onto her elbows, before almost beefing it thanks to her stupid arm wound.

Stabby Bitch had apparently decided it was necessary to wake her up this morning by kicking her in the ribs- he didn’t have a reason to do this, mind you, he was just an asshole.

Ella let out a pitiful half growling, half gurgling noise, and got to her feet, squinting up blearily at the man who continued to ruin her life.

Her head hurt, her ribs now hurt, her arm was pounding, her back ached thanks to sleeping on the _actual_ forest floor, and she was still exhausted. It kinda felt like she was hungover except she’d not even gotten the benefit of getting drunk beforehand.

Stabby Bitch was incredibly unconcerned with her burning rage for him; apparently she was free to glare at him all she wanted as long as she didn’t- _heaven forbid_ \- say real people words.

Japanese words mind you- which was still very alarming to think about.

Stabby Bitch turned away from her, stepping onto the mud before slashing his foot abruptly to the side, spraying the wet dirt into the air and all over the now extinguished fire pit. 

Ella starred; slightly excited despite herself to see Stabby Bitch use more creepy mud magic- not that she really understood why he’d want to set the fire up again, but whatever.

The campfire didn’t set ablaze again, in fact, after briefly glowing white the fireplace literally just disappeared.

Ella blinked, rubbed at her eyes, and looked again, but no, it was just gone. The ash and burnt wood was just completely erased, leaving nothing but normal ground where it had once stood. If she hadn’t personally seen the campfire being built herself she would have never even believed it existed.

_What the fuck_

“We’re going hunting.” Stabby Bitch said in his bear like voice, and Ella had a moment to feel thankful that at least this time it was a ‘we’ and not a ‘you’- because she really didn’t know how to hunt by herself- before he leaped up into the treetops again.

Alarmed, Ella began to follow behind him, realizing pathetically quickly that she would not be able to keep up with his lightning fast travel through the trees, even as she jogged as quickly as she could underneath.

To be fair ‘jogging as quickly as she could’ didn’t mean much considering her lack of physical prowess, and the fact that she was trying to move swiftly through an incredibly thick undergrowth while stupid idiot face got to bounce merrily above her.

Within a matter of seconds he disappeared from her view, simply too fast to even keep a visual on. Not really having much of a plan, or instruction to obey, she just kept running in the same direction Stabby Bitch had last disappeared in. Hopefully she’d catch up eventually, and if she didn’t it would hardly be her fault!

Ella panted, desperately weaving through brambles, her unfortunate situation now made crystal clear- she was unfit. Totally and absolutely unfit- in fact, she was even tempted to say she was somehow worse at running than she’d ever been bef-

Ella almost tripped on her face at the realization that her legs were not the same size they used to be.

She hadn’t noticed because Stabby Bitch was just _so_ fucking massive, but she was _tiny_ \- and not just her normal brand of slightly below average for her age and gender- she was baby sized! Like- as in, she was the size of a small child.

Ella peered sickly at her good arm as she paced forward, upset to see that, yes, her hand was that special brand of small that most children’s were- her wrists in particular were pathetically sized.

So. Not only was her skin more tan, her hair shorter, thicker, and a different color, but she was also fucking de-aged physically. And she spoke Japanese now! Great!

Oh god, even if there were searches for her by now, considering she hadn’t shown up to work, she didn’t fucking look like herself! And Stabby Bitch looked Japanese and spoke Japanese and was so far the only person she’d run into, it was at least a little likely she was in Japan- because- why not!

Ohh god she was screwed! She was out of breath running after a fucking psychopath who stabbed her, in a different body, and maybe in Japan! Also there was magic! She would say things couldn’t get any weirder, but frankly, she was beginning to wonder if that was true.

Ella let out a verbal groan, pushing herself off twisty birch tree she’d almost slammed into and moved forward- she had moved from a relatively fast paced jog to a wounded stumbling now, but whatever, she still had yet to see so much as Stabby Bitches backside, so running a little bit faster was likely not going to account for much. It was probably smarter to pace herself.

And even with that in mind, eventually she had to downgrade to simply walking, cramping horribly and out of breath like she’d just wrestled a bear, it was literally the best she could do.

She’d been walking for what felt like hours, and by now the sun was beating down horribly on her back, and she was sweating enough to fill a liberally sized kiddie pool.

Feeling like death, she clambered up a small hill, yanking herself up by one arm, and almost collapsing several times. For perhaps the thousandth time she dearly wished Stabby Bitch hadn’t decided physical violence was the only conflict resolution he was capable of. It made this whole miserable situation much worse, which was unhelpful to him and to her, and seemed like an incredibly short sighted decision.

Not that she expected any less, despite being able to use kinda cool mud-magic she’d decided Stabby Bitch was a Grade-A-Idiot quite a while ago. This whole, ‘let me run twenty thousand billion miles ahead of you see you later’ shtick only served to prove that point.

Ella snorted under her loud breath, and finally pulled herself to the top of the hill, but before she moved on she paused.

There was something…bad smelling in the air. Ella sniffed, feeling a little bit silly.

No, there was something nasty smelling ahead.

Growing more cautious, Ella paced forward more quietly, trying to keep her footsteps to a low yell instead of the fucking orchestra they appeared to be set to normally. Walking quietly through brush was much harder than they made it look in books and television.

As she moved forward the smell got worse and more distinctive, until Ella began to dread what was ahead. It smelled thickly of iron- more specifically blood. She would know at this point, thanks to her boo-boo and the fact Stabby Bitch was practically swimming in the stuff.

Which probably meant he was just up ahead, or she was about to run into a pack of wolves eating a deer or something. She wasn’t sure which was worse. (that was a lie, she’d take wolves any day)

Trying to keep her breathing even Ella peered through the trees, partially hiding herself behind a formidably pine. Just because she liked wolves better didn’t mean she had a burning need to get mauled by them.

It turned out that it was in fact just Stabby Bitch- Stabby Bitch and several friends. And by _friends_ she meant horrible murdered corpses.

Ella paled, and didn’t even try to stop herself from throwing up into the bushes. Oh god- oh god- there were _dead_ bodies! The man she was obediently following around was killing people! Which she suspected but- but-

There was blood everywhere, in thick clumps in the grass, spread liberally in pools around the corpses prone forms, and of course, Stabby Bitch was absolutely covered in the stuff. It looked like a b-rated horror movie except it was _real_ -

“Oh _god_ ” Ella croaked out between heaves, her hands shaking on her knees as she bent over.

This apparently got Stabby Bitches attention, and his turned to face her looking perfectly nonplussed, and almost weirdly peaceful. She shuddered, peering up at him fearfully behind her hair.

He looked at her for a few minutes, before almost calmly speaking.

“You’ll get used to it.” He stated simply, sounding more put-together than he’d ever had before- previously he’d always spoken as if he was permanently annoyed. Ella shivered uncontrollably, resisting the urge to shake her head frantically, to scream and cry- no she did not want to get used to _this_.

“Come.” He motioned, and timidly she approached, wiping her mouth with the back of her trembling good hand. Why was this happening to her? What did she do to deserve this? Why did he want her here, just to catch him inadequate amounts of fish and take too long to gather wood? Why didn’t he just leave her alone?!

Ella carefully stepped around the biggest splashes of red, but was unable to save herself entirely- bare feet splashing unsteadily into the occasional patch of warm blood. Oh god it was still warm.

Stabby Bitch cocked his head and looked down at her.

“These people are my enemies, I want them all dead.” He growled, but it didn’t seem directed at her. Ella squinted- ‘these people’? That implied that the people that he- that he killed were all part of some group or race. She sincerely hoped it was the former and not the later- things couldn’t get much worse, but she really did not want Stabby Bitch to be racist as well as homicidal.

Forcing herself to turn her head down she sadly took in the bodies, her own muscles tensed tightly to stop her from bursting into tears. She was pretty sure Stabby Bitch would not be one of those guys who weren’t weird about crying.

She tried to keep her eyes solely on parts of the people that weren’t horrible mangled or split open, but it was a rough endeavor. Thankfully, none of them seemed to have the same skin colors or features other than probably being Japanese, all looking fairly distinct- complete with weird hair styles and colors- was dying your hair to impossible colors really this popular here?

What all the people did have in common was that they were all wearing similar clothing, weird sturdy looking green flak jackets and big pouches that were full to spilling with those strange knives Stabby Bitch had been using.

They also had odd headband things with metal plates and some sort of symbol drawn onto them…which was vaguely familiar in a way that sort of unnerved her. But try as she might Ella could not remember a single time she’d ever seen anyone wear something like that- she’d definitely notice if some group on the news wore this sort of stuff right?

Ella looked back up to Stabby Bitch, really wanting to ask exactly what these poor souls- four of them approximately, though it was hard to tell with some of the…gore- had even done to him to make him ‘want them all dead’.

Considering Stabby Bitch was an abhorrent fucking murder monster these people, whoever they were, were probably the good guys. Or at least not as terrible. Or maybe they were and everyone in magic land was evil and bad.

Still didn’t stop her from feeling pity and guilt and sadness slosh around in her gut.

Stabby Bitch was now digging through one of the corpses bags, which was appalling, but also pretty par for the course for his morals so far, and took out some sort of scroll.

He opened it swiftly, and stared at it for a few minutes, his somewhat satisfied expression giving way to frustration once again. Which was kind of bad for her considering his last few sentences were the least demeaning ones he’d spoken to her so far, but was also weirdly relieving.

After a moment he grunted aggressively, and turned the paper around, swiftly shoving it into her hands.

Ella swore inwardly and clutched at the scroll awkwardly, unprepared for him to include her in anything really.

“Anything look familiar?” He asked gruffly, sounding like he absolutely despised asking her opinion on anything.

Ella took that as permission and peered down at the paper, only to be surprised that it was a map.

Slightly excited she scanned it eagerly, hoping to get an exact marker on her location, but slowly grew more disappointed and confused as time went on.

This…was not familiar to her at all. Which should have made sense, since, y’know, she wasn’t from Japan- but this didn’t really look like Japan either.

Land of Iron? Land of Hot Water? Of Fire? Were there actually Japanese countries called that type of thing?

Cocking her head, a subtly feeling of dread crawling through her stomach, she studied the Land of Fire more closely. There was that familiar feeling- like deja-vu again. Why…wait. Konohagakure? Why did that…K-

Konoha. Like. Like _Naruto??????The Anime?????????_

Oh. OH.

Ella slowly pulled her face out from the map, trying to look unfazed.

“Sorry, it’s not.” She mumbled, and Stabby Bitch sighed like he was the one going through the biggest crisis of the century and not her.

Why was she in the Naruto universe? Why- why was she in the _Naruto_ universe? She didn’t even like Naruto! She barely watched the damn show and only knew little bits and pieces of it through cultural osmosis. At least that explained the strange clothing and the freaky eyes and the weird ass hair colors- and also the Magic, which, was probably Chakra or whatever right? It was called Chakra- she was like, seventy percent sure it was.

Were the characters in Naruto real people? Was Stabby Bitch a main character?? Would she meet fucking _Sasuke???_

Jesus wept.

Ella cleared her throat, nervously preparing to actually talk- she didn’t want to get stabbed again, but maybe since Stabby Bitch had just recently sated his murder boner he’d be more willing?

“Uhm…why did you think I’d recognize something?” She asked carefully. _And why do you seem not to?_

Stabby Bitch looked down his nose at her, looking vaguely insulted that she’d spoken.

“Sometimes I get souls from around here. No more questions.” He snapped the last part, as if just remembering his own rule. Inwardly Ella counted that as win, though his answer left her more confused than previously.

Souls? So- did he like tug her soul out of her body somehow and transport it into this one? She supposed that made more sense with what she did remember of the experience, but it still left a lot of questions. Like why did he even for that in the first place? She hadn’t been very helpful so far, and he didn’t seem like the type who just wanted to enjoy some pleasant company.

She’d initially assumed that this might be some sort of messed up sexual thing, but he seemed more repulsed by her than anything, and hadn’t shown even the slightest interest in her. Which was frankly the one fucking blessing she’d gotten so far. So then why?

And why did it sound like he’d done this before? Actually, that was a bad sign probably, considering she didn’t see any other small children running around after him. Yikes. She’d have to find a way to escape him sooner than later- which was obvious to think about but much harder to form a plan around in actuality.

Stabby Bitch snatched the map from her hand harshly, and she let him, not even bothering to be mad. He tucked it away in his little pack and dusted off his pants, as if the quick motion could ever somehow clean him of the literal gallons of blood he was soaked in. it was almost funny, but surrounded by the dead people he got said blood from she was incapable of laughter.

“Were wasting daylight.” Was the only warning she got before he once again spirited himself up into the higher reaches of the forest. Ella actually groaned out loud, but began to jog after him, this time starting at a much slower rate now that she knew exactly what she was in for.


End file.
